After the charity event, crime in Gotham declined but it was by no means a calm like some of the media were already talking.

Pfft. When I looked out into the night from my kitchen window, I felt like invisible wires of tension were tying the buildings together, only to threaten to break the city apart at any moment. The seconds of anticipation before the referee says 'fight'. Something was out on the horizon, and I couldn't see it yet, but I knew it was coming.

And I felt disgustingly underprepared. Both tactically, and to some degree, mentally.

First order of business was getting Abigail moved out of her apartment and into my firehouse, which was spread out in gradual trips over a week so it wouldn't be overly conspicuous to anyone who might've been watching her. She insisted that she didn't need me to take all of her records to the firehouse, but in the back of my mind, I imagined them torching her place and her records being destroyed...No. Wasn't going to happen.

I didn't expect her to have so many books, either. I was glad; it felt nice after a long patrol and a hot shower, picking up something from her library to read the rest of the night till daybreak. Sometimes she'd stay up just to read to me as I drifted off into sleep. She had a lot of my old favorites, like P and P, Jane Eyre, and a beat-up copy of Alice in Wonderland.

I can't tell you how many times we laid on the floor, side-by-side, and both of us fell asleep with books on our faces.

I moved one of the bed frames from the dormitories into the room where my hammock was, got her a mattress from a thrift store nearby, and I think both of us were relieved to not be home alone most of the time. We just...enjoyed having someone else in the next room.

For the entire time she was living with me, we did this one thing. It felt like an inside joke; it wasn't exactly funny but it was something only we did, only we understood it. For example, one day Gail was picking something out of her collection to throw on the turntable (we brought them over in cardboard boxes, but I eventually talked her into putting them in the spare weapons caches I had so they'd be protected), and I'd hear her call out, "Jason?"

And I'd be downstairs working on the Missus or on the computer, and I'd call back, "Yeah? You okay?"

Just the smile in her voice as she'd say, "Yeah."

Then later that same day, I was cooking and she'd be standing right next to me, picking spices out of my rack. I'd say, "Gail?"

"Mmm?" Would be her reply.

I'd smirk at her, "Nothin'."

We just... fit into a relaxed, natural domesticity that was punctuated by the training sessions I'd begun to give her when I wasn't on patrol. It caught me off-guard, she didn't even wait until she was completely settled in, she wanted to train. I started with basic boxing, stances and easy punches, mixed in with good ol' fashioned conditioning - both body and mind.

She was a good student and unlike the men I trained what seemed like a lifetime ago, she didn't call me 'sir' nor was afraid to ask questions if she didn't quite get something. The meditation, something I still struggled with, came naturally to her and every morning as I stumbled in from patrol, I could find her in the dorms meditating in the sunshine. It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. While I was a physical person, strong and tall, she was more adept at exercises of the mind.

As for her conditioning, her asthma was an issue the first couple of weeks and I couldn't work her too hard because of it, especially with the shadowboxing drills that had her moving nonstop. I never pressured her beyond her limits, that was all her. Gail ran to the bare bones, often ending up collapsed spread-eagle while I sprinted upstairs for her inhaler. "I can go longer," became like a catchphrase for her...little chick had the heart of a lion, but shitty lungs. Her ambition and drive, in almost everything I had her try, was more prevalent in her mind than her actual physical ability. Reminded me of when I was the scrawny Robin that didn't know when to quit.

But after those weeks, she was pushing herself and finally, her body caught up with her mind's hustle. After maybe twenty-five sessions, she could go two hours without much pause. Her punches were cleaner, her footwork improved and faster. She created angles, got creative with it. Her only disadvantage was her stamina, somewhat handicapped by her asthma still, but I trained her to work around it. Use those angles to hit key points on the body and do enough damage to survive. Conserve energy.

I added kickboxing and muay thai to her routine almost immediately, wrapping sheets around my forearms and legs as makeshift pads. When I was behind the pads, watching her drive knees, fling kicks, throw punches...and there was an anger I'd only seen in brief flashes before on her face and years on mine.

I knew that anger. It came from something you just don't swallow in one go, like trauma...Stuff like that, you go through and once you're out of the woods, you don't have arms long enough to box with God. But you deal with it in small pieces over years, until it's gone. And the both of us? We had mounds to go. But you know what, we're born fighters. We'll box with God until we're blue in the face, covered in blood and still insist that we can do this shit all day long.

While she trained, I was working on that underprepared feeling. You see, after Fear Halloween, I had plenty of scrap metal from drones and old armor that I didn't know what to do with, along with my Arkham Knight armor I knew I would never touch again. It was just sitting in a massive heap in one corner of the engine bay and I was staring at it when I had the idea on what to do with it.

I called Lucius to ship metalworking equipment, a grinder, and any remaining gear from Bruce's last batsuit to me. If my hunch about the coming war was right, it wasn't just me that would need protection. Once I had everything I needed under my roof I got to work perfecting and improving my armor, and designing armor for my brothers and spares.

Dick's was easiest to figure out. His strength was speed, agility, short but powerful strikes from midair or with great leverage. Emphasis on legs. So I used some of the lighter metal from Bruce's armor platings to protect his spine and joints, and I was toying around with fixing his gloves to conduct and store electricity from his escrima sticks for short blasts, incapacitation, or even defibrillation.

Tim was tricky. His staff was his primary weapon and he was very gadget-happy; his biggest asset was his ability to be versatile, use the gadgets to solve the problem so he didn't have to waste physical strength to do it. He wasn't a natural fighter like me, nor an acrobat like Dick. He had to work at it, but he was a better detective. In the end, I worked out armor for his arms derived from my Arkham Knight designs, but added extra gadget utility in the form of two belts that crossed over his chest, connected in the back. In the center of his chest where these belts crossed was a hub, all he had to do was mash it and anyone he was trying to hold onto while gliding would be enveloped in a harness. It would take the burden off him.

The armor for Dick and Tim took me about four weeks to complete. After that, all I did for my own armor was reinforce the chest kevlar with metal plating that used to be on a drone, spray - painted the red bat on it, and added metal braces to my boots to help my ankle. The tune-up needed for that was just a single week.

Gail added some input, like the shock gloves for Dick and the harness for Tim's belts. But other than that, she brought me water with ice every few hours and made sure the occasional burns I'd get on my hands were taken care of with antiseptic and bandages. She told me every time to be more careful.

She told me to be careful every time I left for patrol, too. With good reason. While Barbara and Tim, who'd undergone surgery a few days after Dick left, were putting pressure on Falcone financially, I was on the streets shaking down his goons for information. For the scummiest among them, I gave them a choice, to give Falcone up or to bite a bullet. Most chose the bullet. The few, and the smart, abandoned the Don.

Gail, one morning as she stitched a gash on my forearm, told me something that stuck out about the men that would betray a scary man in order to be spared by a scarier one.

Her face held a pensive concentration as she spoke, "Cicero once said, 'The foundation of justice is good faith'. If the men you threatened with death tonight thought for even a second that you wouldn't put a bullet between their eyes, the way they might with Batman, they would have begged for death."

And they did.

Even with the danger that might've followed from her leaving the firehouse, she insisted on seeing Bullock every other day for a few hours. So I'd take her over, drop her off. She would put on a record for him and talk to him, reporting some of the little things going on. What I'd taught her that day, a book she was reading, how the food in the hospital cafeteria sucked - she told him that he'd probably agree.

Tim, in recovery from surgery, would keep an eye on her for me while I worked and researched. It took a bit of arm-twisting, but Tim and I reached a small truce. If he did this favor for me, I'd think about talking Barb into letting him do some more hands-on work. But I waited a good bit before I made the trip to the Clocktower.

For those weeks Gail and I were living together and I had something to fix, some project to work on, something to look forward to, I was the closest to content that I'd ever been. I had 3 hots and a cot, a warm shower, work to put down a crime lord that needed putting down, family in town, family abroad that I hoped came home safe, a home…

I actually had a home. For a while, the firehouse had been just where I crashed and kept my shit. But...with the new roommate, her books and music, the work I had downstairs...It became a symbol of safety. Home. I liked coming home to this place, and I liked coming home to more than patching myself up and going straight to bed. I found myself eager to sleep at night knowing tomorrow was another day. I found myself not dreading sleep because my nightmares were infrequent and their terror was diluted by something I never thought myself worthy of having...confidence in my life, and hope.

It was nice there for a while, even had a couple of stray dogs stopping by every once in a while for table scraps I'd leave out for them. Yeah...it was nice there for a while...and then Dick shot me an update all the way from Hispaniola. He'll be seeing Bruce in the flesh in a few days. That's when the restlessness started, sleepless nights where I'd lay awake in the hammock.

I'll tell you what I won't be doing. I won't be telling Bruce that I'd been sitting on my ass all this time. Even though I was busting my ass with the armor and extra patrols, it wouldn't be useful to him unless I had a lead. I needed to get something accomplished. Which was fine…

I do my best work under pressure.

The fumes coming off the bore cleaner I was using to clean my guns had me a bit groggy as I stuffed the rod down the barrel of one of my shotguns, waiting to see the end in the mag. I rubbed my eye on my forearm, wanting to go back to bed. The red numbers on the stove told me it was almost four in the morning.

I couldn't sleep. It wasn't the usual nightmares or insomnia I brought upon myself to avoid nightmares. My jaw tightened involuntarily as I yanked the rod back out, before taking some gun oil on a cloth and rubbing everything down. It was something new that was keeping me up, and it was a tad scary that this upset me enough to forgo sleep.

"You too, huh?" I nearly jumped out of my skin at her voice at the door, the cloth that'd been in my hand falling to the floor.

Since Gail's fingers were almost completely healed, she'd started braiding her hair into one long and blond rope that curled one shoulder. Her eyes were sharper with the sleepy squint she had, and she was barefoot, wearing only a pair of sweatpants and a tank top showing the thicker limbs on her small frame. A result of her training. She padded closer, and I noticed she always looked where she walked, careful of every step.

"No rest for the wicked, I guess," I meant to smile, but all I could give her was a half-grimace. "Why are you still up?"

She didn't answer at first, going to put on the tea kettle she brought over from her apartment on to boil. Finally, she said, her eyes on the copper, "I'm nervous."

"Don't blame you," I couldn't tell if she was bothered by the cleaner fumes, but I opened the kitchen window behind me anyway. "Things could get messy fast. We'll need to be ready."

"That's why I can't sleep," She said, leaning against the counter as she waited for the kettle to whistle. "I feel ready. I feel good, strong. But I've got my doubts, and they're so loud in my head...Am I out of my depth?"

My hands stopped on the gun and I looked at her. She met my gaze. I said slowly, "Doubt...Didn't expect that coming from you."

"Why not?" She bowed her head a little, somewhat shocked that I didn't really think of her as a doubting kind of person, and ashamed too.

"That's usually my department," I attempted to joke, but it fell flat, "I ask myself that constantly. Whether or not I'm out of my depth. After Halloween I thought redemption was impossible. I wanted it, but...back then, parts of me didn't want it and mostly didn't think I deserved it."

"What changed?" She asked me, her fingers playing with the end of her braid.

I shot her a smirk. "I got kicked in the face by Dick Grayson."

She snorted, her lips teasing a smile, "Why did he kick you?"

"Because I told him I didn't deserve his forgiveness or his help," I said, finishing off the shotgun as she put tea bags in two cups. "He told me I may be out of my mind, but I'm not out of my depth to want to turn it around."

The kettle whistled and in a minute, she was handing me a cup of tea before settling into the seat across from me on the new table. I muttered a thanks.

"Did he ever feel like that?" Her voice was so quiet I almost didn't hear her.

"Dick?"

She shook her head. "No...Batman. Bruce Wayne."

I sipped from my cup to avoid answering right away, the hot tea scorching my tongue but I didn't much care. For some reason, thinking about this hurt. "I dunno...when I was his Robin, if I ever noticed that he was unsure of himself it was probably by accident. He was always...confident, but...uh..." I swallowed, her eyes on me. "Maybe, I dunno."

"You don't like talking about him," She noted, peering at me over her cup, "You'll talk all day about music, literature, art, your brothers and Barbara...but you don't like talking about him. I've heard more about Alfred than about Bruce."

"You don't like talking about your dad," I said back, my nerves jittering under my skin. I knew she was right, I just didn't want to admit it. "Besides, I don't really wanna talk about the guy who didn't kill the garbage that tortured me for a year."

She frowned, and leaned forward a little, the light above the table lightening the edges of her bangs. "My father neglected me for years. Wanted nothing to do with me but make a monthly contribution to child support..." Goosebumps raised up on my arms when she took my hand. "Your father loves you, Jason. And look at what you've accomplished. He'll be proud."

I almost wanted to say 'I wouldn't know'. I withdrew my hand from hers to stand up and carry the dirty bore patches to the trash bin. In the back of my mind, the words in that letter Bruce wrote me ran over and over. You deserved a good home and people that love you. I just wish I had told you how much.

Yeah, me too.

It terrified me to face him again after all this time. Not that he would be angry, but...even after all these years, some things never change. Like me waiting for the 'good job' I knew I wasn't going to get. Like me waiting for his disappointment that I didn't really see from him but figured he was anyway. I didn't hate him...I didn't. Not anymore. But I'm not sure what replaced the hatred, save for a remoteness from him. Like a huge chasm was between us and neither of us knew how to bridge the gap.

"He wasn't my father," I said, leaning against the wall by the trash can with my back to her, "But he and Alfred were the closest I had. I lived for them to be proud of me. All I wanted was to do the job as best as I could...but even in the beginning, I knew that the criminals were getting worse. More and more sadistic, more and more sick and twisted...especially Joker." My voice was shaking, but I went on, "It was always him that shook me to the core, before the torture...because out of all of them, he was just...unhinged. Bruce knew it too...but he kept going. Kept playing the game the way he fixed the rules...until I stopped playing."

I scratched the back of my neck, squeezing my eyes shut. I heard her chair squeak as she stood, walking over to put a warm hand on my shoulder. "I stopped playing too. Six years ago."

She sighed, her eyes darting to her feet. "I'm going to say this, you can hear it and tell me to screw off if you feel that way." She met my eyes, a compassion in them I hadn't anticipated with this subject. "Even though you've got reservations about seeing Bruce, he's still an important part of your life. And though I don't know him, haven't met him, I'm sure you're an important part of his. He forgave you. He saw your redemption before you did…"

She scrubbed a hand over her eyes, "What I'm failing to say here is that you should talk with him. Go see him when he gets back." She yawned, and half-turned towards the door, throwing words over her shoulder in a stern voice, "If my father gave an eighth of the damn yours does, I'd talk with the man."

She left the room, and I heard her soft footsteps down the hall, listening to them as I thought about that. There were some things she didn't know, like the video tape Joker sent him. Like how Joker manipulated me into hating Batman by jabbing Tim in my side. How Bruce couldn't figure out where I was.

But Gail had a point. I owed Bruce. He brought me back from jumping off the cliff. He reminded me who I was. I didn't see it then, but hindsight's 20/20. I guess it's inevitable. I can't avoid him forever... Even if I'd rather hot glue my eyes shut.